While I watched Hotel Rwanda, I was just awestruck at how the whole situation was. The leaders of the UN just pretended to look away as the Hutus were killing the Tutsis by thousands a day. Also, since the Tutsis had no help from the UN, they created a rebellion, which then in turn killed more people. With all this going on, it isn’t hard for somebody to look away from all of the little things that cause sudden reactions in many different ways that tend to happen all the time in things like this. I myself took note of these things and wrote them down.
I was appalled at how the Interhamwe responded to the radio station. It was as if the radio station and “The Hutu Power Man” put them into a trance to do his bidding. Also, “The Hutu Power Man”, to me, seems a lot like Hitler. Even though he doesn’t have Hitler’s power, he has the same flow, and connection with the audience as Hitler does. They said that during every single one of Hitler’s speeches (and after), people seemed entranced and willing to do anything for Hitler. This is exactly how people seemed after listening to “The Hutu Power Man” in Hotel Rwanda.
Another thing that stuck with me was all the corruption and bribery that took place in the Rwandan genocide. Unlike the Holocaust, corruption was one of main parts of the genocide. Even though Hitler was considered crazy and gave no freedom to his countrymen, he did not let anyone take bribes and he didn’t either.
One thing that stunned me was just the aftermath of it. After a grand total of one hundred days, around one million corpses were created in this Rwandan genocide. In comparison, after four thousand, three hundred, and eighty-three days, eleven million people were left dead from The Holocaust. Even though the Rwandan genocide has a higher deaths-day ratio, that doesn’t mean that one is worse than the other.
The one thing in this movie that left its mark on me the most, and will probably not leave my mind would have to be the scene on the river road. It was as grotesque as it could get without it being gory. The fact that people had no clue that they were driving over human bodies and leaving the van to notice the whole road was full of the corpses, is just too much.
Despite all of that, this movie overall is a must-see movie. I would give it a four and a half out of ten.
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